After a security incident, an administrator revokes the SSL certificate for their web server generating certificate errors: ftp.company.com, mail.company.com, and partners.company.com. Which of the…

Question

Options

• AEach of the servers used the same EV certificate.
• BThe servers used a wildcard certificate.
• CThe web server was the CA for the domain.
• DRevoking a certificate can only be done at the domain level.

• A
  3% (1)
• B
  77% (23)
• C
  7% (2)
• D
  13% (4)

Explanation

A wildcard certificate (e.g., *.company.com) is a single certificate that is valid for all immediate subdomains of a domain. All of the affected hostnames - ftp.company.com, mail.company.com, and partners.company.com - are first-level subdomains of company.com, which is exactly the scope a wildcard certificate covers. When this single shared certificate was revoked, every server that relied on it immediately began producing certificate errors. Option A (EV certificate) describes an Extended Validation certificate, which is about identity assurance level, not multi-server coverage. Option C (web server as CA) is an unusual configuration and would imply the web server signed its own certs, not that they were shared across servers. Option D is factually incorrect - certificates are revoked individually by serial number, not only at the domain level.

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